On the eve of my 21st birthday, my parents took me to a fancy dinner with a well-stocked bar. The restaurant was aware of my birthday and offered me their most popular cocktail: a mango mojito. Up to this point, I’ve never had a proper cocktail. Obviously being an underaged college student at the time, the only drinking I partook in included red cups filled with cheap alcohol and various sodas to mask the taste. Needless to say, most of these red cup concoctions did not taste very good.

I immediately fell in love with the mango mojito. The mixture of the refreshing mint with the sweet mango and the kick of rum was unlike anything I’ve had ever before.